Role of ceramic composites and microwave pulsing on efficient microwave processing of pork meat samples

A detailed theoretical analysis has been carried out to study efficient heating of one-dimensional pork meat (PLR and WP) slabs via an alumina–meat–ceramic–meatalumina composite corresponding to one side and both side microwave incidence. The ceramic (Al2O3 or SiC) layer is composited to examine processing rate and thermal runaway. Detailed analysis has been carried out for PLR and a few test cases are shown for WP. The role of an intermediate ceramic layer is examined for one side and both side microwave incidence cases. In general, the processing time decreases with the thickness of the intermediate ceramic layer for samples with thickness (Ls) ≤ 1 cm in the presence of one side incidence. On the other hand, the processing time is found to increase with the thickness of an intermediate alumina layer for both side incidence and a similar trend is also observed for larger sample thicknesses with one side incidence. It is found that the degree of the thermal runaway is reduced with the intermediate ceramic layer for samples with Ls ≤ 1 cm whereas the thermal runaway is enhanced with the inclusion of the intermediate ceramic layer for larger sample thicknesses. Further, the role of pulsing has been demonstrated for Ls = 1 cm. It is found that processing time with one side incidence is smaller than that with both side incidence in the absence of pulsing, but the trend is reversed in the presence of pulsing. Thus pulsed microwave heating in the presence of both side distributed incidence with an intermediate alumina layer is found to be an optimal heating strategy for processing meat samples.

Research highlights
► Two meat samples such as PLR and WP are considered.
► Role of ceramic composites within meat samples are studied.
► Influence of pulsing has been considered.
► Efficacy of microwave processing has been studied based on overall heating rate and thermal runaway.